The present invention relates to culture media, cell cultures and methods of culturing stem cells such as under defined and xeno-free culturing conditions.
Human Embryonic stem cells (hESCs) were traditionally cultured and derived using the conventional methods employed for mouse ESCs, i.e., in the presence of a medium supplemented with fetal bovine serum (FBS) and feeder-layers consisting of inactivated mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) (Thomson et al, 1998). However, for use in cell-based therapy, hESC cultures should be well-defined and xeno-free (i.e., devoid of any animal contaminant) in terms of culture components. In recent years, extensive investigation into improving the culture systems for hESCs has yielded the following advances: the ability to grow cells in serum-free conditions (Amit et al, 2000); maintenance of the cells in an undifferentiated state on a Matrigel™ matrix with 100% MEF-conditioned medium (Xu et al, 2001); and the use of either human embryonic fibroblasts, adult Fallopian tube epithelium (Richards et al, 2002) or foreskin fibroblasts (Amit et al, 2003; Hovatta et al, 2003) as feeder layers. However, while the use of MEF-conditioned medium or a Matrigel™ matrix (which contains components from animal cells) may expose the hESCs to animal pathogens, the batch-specific variations may affect the quality of the culture. On the other hand, although human feeder-layer-based culture systems are xeno-free, they require the simultaneous growth of both feeder cell layers and hESCs, which limits the potential of large-scale culturing of hESCs. Moreover, culture systems based on feeder cells or conditioned medium are not well-defined and thus cannot be accurately repeated due to differences between the various lines of feeder-cells.
To overcome such limitations, attempts have been made to culture hESCs in feeder-layer-free culture systems devoid of conditioned medium. Xu C., et al. (Stem Cells, 2005, 23:315-23) developed a culture system based on a Matrigel™ matrix and a medium supplemented with serum Replacement™ (SR), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), with or without the addition of the Flt-3 ligand to the culture medium. However, under these conditions, the background differentiation of the ESCs was 20 or 28%, respectively, which is higher than observed for hESCs when cultured on MEFs. Another culturing system based a Matrigel™ matrix and a medium supplemented with bFGF and Noggin, an antagonist of bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs), resulted in a background differentiation of 10% (Xu R H., et al., 2005, Nat Methods. 2: 185-190). However, since both of these systems rely on Matrigel™ as a culturing matrix, their use for cell-based therapy is limited. To avoid animal contaminants, the present inventors have previously developed a culture system based on a fibronectin matrix and a medium supplemented with 20% SR, transforming growth factor β1 (TGFβ1) and bFGF (Amit et al, 2004). Under these conditions, the cells maintained hESC features for more than 32 passages. A further step towards defined culture conditions for hESCs culture was recently achieved by Ludwig and colleague (Ludwig et al, 2006) when using a matrix consisted of the combination of human collagen IV, fibronectin, laminin and vitronectin and a medium supplemented with human serum albumin, bFGF and TGFβ1. Such conditions enabled the derivation and culturing of hESCs under defined and feeder layer-free culture conditions. However, hESCs cultured in these conditions exhibited chromosomal instability of the cells following extended periods in culture. For example, one of the isolated hESC lines was reported to harbor a karyotype of 47,XXY after 4 months of continuous culturing and a second line, which was initially normal, converted to trisomy 12 between 4 and 7 months of culturing. Thus, improvements of the feeder-free, xeno-free culturing systems of hESCs are highly needed.
Recent studies discussed the possible involvement of several intracellular transduction pathways in hESC renewal and maintenance of “stemness” identity, but the mechanism underlining hESC self-maintenance is still unrevealed. Sato and colleagues (Sato et al, 2004) suggested that the Wnt pathway is involved in hESC self-renewal. A later publication by the same group indicates that the TGFβ pathway plays a crucial role in cell-fate determination and holds interconnections with the Wnt signaling pathway in maintaining hESC features (James, D., et al., 2005). These results are consistent with the feeder layer-free culture method suggested by the present inventors (Amit et al, 2004), which is based on the addition of TGFβ1, bFGF and/or LIF to a culture medium which includes serum or serum replacement. In addition, the mechanism by which bFGF involves in hESC′ self-maintenance has yet to be proven. Another candidate for the role of maintaining hESC properties is Noggin—an inhibitor of the BMPs signaling pathway (Xu R H., et al, 2005). However, to date, not Noggin itself or any Noggin analog were found in MEF-conditioned media.
Mouse ESCs can be continuously cultured without feeder layers provided that leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) is added to the culture medium. However, accumulating data regarding hESCs suggest that LIF has no effect on preventing hESC differentiation (Thomson et al, 1998; Reubinof et al, 2000). In addition, activation of key proteins of the LIF cellular pathway, such as signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) was found to be weak or absent in hESCs (Daheron et al, 2004; Humphrey et al, 2004; Sato et al, 2004). The gp130 receptor, which is activated by ligands such as LIF, interleukin 6 (IL-6) and a chimera made of IL-6 and its soluble IL6 receptor (the IL6RIL6 chimera; Chebath et al, 1997), was shown to positively affect the mouse ESCs self-maintenance via STAT3 (Williams et al, 1988; Niwa et al, 1998; Smith et al, 1988). In hematopoietic stem cells, the IL6RIL6 chimera exhibited a much higher affinity for human gp130 and was found to be more potent in increasing proliferation of progenitor cells than the mixture of IL-6 and the soluble IL6 receptor (Kollet et al, 1999). On the other hand, the IL6RIL6 chimera induced differentiation of ESC-derived oligodendrocyte precursors (Zhang P L., et al., 2006, Mol. Cell Neurosci. 31: 387-398). In a recent study, Nichols et al., (1994) demonstrated that the IL6RIL6 chimera is capable of supporting mouse ESC culturing and derivation. On the other hand, Daheron et al. (2004) showed that although the LIFRβ and the signaling subunit gp130 are expressed in hESCs and that human LIF can induce STATS phosphorylation and nuclear translocation in hESCs, human LIF is unable to maintain the pluripotent state of hESCs. In addition, Humphrey et al. (2004) found that hESCs rapidly differentiate when cultured in a medium containing members of the IL-6 family of cytokines such as LIF, IL-6 or a complex of the soluble IL-6 receptor and IL-6 (the “hyper-IL-6”) and concluded that maintenance of pluropotency in human ESCs is STAT independent. Thus, it is currently accepted that in contrast to mouse ESCs which can be maintained in the undifferentiated state in the presence of activators of the gp130 receptor, culturing of human ESCs in the presence of LIF, IL6 or the hyper-IL-6 results in differentiation of the hESCs.
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a defined, xeno-free medium suitable for maintaining stable, undifferentiated and pluripotent hESCs devoid of the above limitations.